单选题The increase in global trade means that international companies cannot afford to make costly advertising mistakes if they want to be competitive. Understanding the language and culture of target markets in foreign countries is one of the keys to successful international marketing. Too many companies, however, have jumped into foreign markets with embarrassing results. Translation mistakes are at the heart of many blunders in international advertising. General Motors, the US auto manufacturer, got a costly lesson when it introduced its Chevrolet Nova to the Puerto Rican market. "Nova" is Latin for "new(star)"and means "star" in many languages, but in spoken Spanish it can sound like "nova", meaning "it doesn't go". Few people wanted to buy a car with that cursed meaning. When GM changed the name to Caribe, sales "picked up" dramatically. Marketing blunders have also been made by food and beverage companies. One American food company's friendly "Jolly Green Giant"(for advertising vegetables)became something quite different when it was translated into Arabic as "Intimidating Green Ogre". When translated into German, Pepsi's popular slogan, "Come Alive with Pepsi" came out implying "Come Alive from the Grave". No wonder customers in Germany didn't rush out to buy Pepsi. Successful international marketing doesn't stop with good translations—other aspects of culture must be researched and understood if marketers are to avoid blunders. When marketers do not understand and appreciate the values, tastes, geography, climate, superstitions, religion, or economy of a culture, they fail to capture their target market. For example, an American designer tried to introduce a new perfume into the Latin American market but the product aroused little interest. The main reason was that the camellia used in it was traditionally used for funerals in many South American countries. Having awakened to the special nature of foreign advertising, companies are becoming much more conscientious in their translations and more sensitive to cultural distinctions. The best way to prevent errors is to hire professional translators who understand the target language and its idiomatic usage, or to use a technique called "back translation" to reduce the possibility of blunders. The process uses one person to translate a message into the target language and another to translate it back. Effective translators aim to capture the overall message of an advertisement because a word-for-word duplication of the original rarely conveys the intended meaning and often causes misunderstandings. In designing advertisements for other countries, messages need to be short and simple. They should also avoid jokes, since what is considered funny in one part of the world may not be so humorous in another.

单选题Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and ______ for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

单选题{{B}}Passage 5{{/B}} Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time-sense is hardly older than the United States. It is a by-product of industrialism--a sort of psychological analogue of synthetic perfumes and aniline dyes. Time is our tyrant. We are chronically aware of the moving minute hand, even of the moving second hand. We have to be. There are trains to be caught, clocks to be punched, tasks to be done in specified periods, records to be broken by fractions of a second, machines that set the pace and have to be kept up with. Another time-emphasizing entity is the factory and its dependent, the office. Factories exist for the purpose of getting certain quantities of goods made in a certain time. The old artisan worked as it suited him with the result that consumers generally had to wait for the goods they had ordered from him. The factory is a device for making workmen hurry. The machine revolves so often each minute; so many movements have to be made, so many pieces produced each hour. Result: the factory worker (and the same is true of the office worker) is compelled to know time in its smallest fractions. In the hand-work age there was no such compulsion to be aware of minutes and seconds. Our awareness of time has reached such a pitch of intensity that we suffer acutely whenever our travels take us into some corner of the world where people are not interested in minutes and seconds. The unpunctuality of the Orient, for example, is appalling to those who come freshly from a land of fixed meal-times and regular train services. For a modern American or Englishman, waiting is a psychological torture. An Indian accepts the blank hours with resignation, even with satisfaction. He has not lost the fine art of doing nothing. Our notion of time as a collection of minutes, each of which must be filled with some business or amusement, is wholly alien to the Oriental, just as it was wholly alien to the Greek. For the man who lives in a pre-industrial world, time moves at a slow and easy pace; he does not care about each minute, for the good reason that he has not been made conscious of the existence of minutes. This brings us to a seeming paradox. Acutely aware of the smallest constituent particles of time--of time, as measured by clock-work and train arrivals and the revolutions of machines--industrialized man has to a great extent lost the old awareness of time in its larger divisions. The time of which we have knowledge is artificial, machine-made time. Of natural, cosmic time, as it is measured out by sun and moon, we are for the most part almost wholly unconscious. Pre-industrial people know time in its daily, monthly and seasonal rhythms. They are aware of sunrise, noon and sunset; of the full moon and the new; of equinox and solstice; of spring and summer, autumn and winter. Industrialism and urbanism have changed all this. One can live and work in a town without being aware of the daily march of the sun across the sky; without ever seeing the moon and stars. Even changes of season affect the townsman very little. He is the inhabitant of an artificial universe that is, to a great extent, walled off from the world of nature. Outside the walls, time is cosmic and moves with the motion of sun and stars. Within, it is an affair of revolving wheels and is measured in seconds and minutes--at its longest, in eight-hour days and five-day weeks. We have a new consciousness; but it has been purchased at the expense of the old consciousness.

单选题Being a foreigner, Cad did not ______ to the joke.

单选题According to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1995, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population received 30.9 percent of the income, while the poorest 10 received only 2.2 percent. Such ______ in income and wealth are found in both cities and rural areas.

单选题Americans today don't place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education — not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren't difficult to find. "Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual,"says education writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could be a counterbalance. " Ravitch' s latest book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits. But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy; "Continuing along this path," says writer Earl Shorris. "We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society." "Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege," writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in U.S. politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. " Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized — going to school and learning to read — so he can preserve his innate goodness. Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, and imagines. School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country's educational system is in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise".

单选题The new factory that has been built next to us has ______ the value of our house.

单选题At the outset, Nixon warned, too, that a great effort would be needed to meet the Communist challenge. But his audiences seemed______in such warnings, preferring to be reassured.

单选题In the professions where women ______ numerically, it would be reasonable to expect them to hold senior positions. A. tolerate B. integrate C. predominate D. accumulate

单选题The Taganka production Poslushaite ( "Listen") , culled from statements and works of Vladimir Mayakovsky, proved to be a singular exception.

单选题Early that June Pins XII secretly addressed the Sacred College of Cardinals on the extermination of the Jews. "Every word we address to the competent authority on this subject, and all our public utterances," he said in explanation of his reluctance to express more open condemnation, "have to be carefully weighed and measured by us in the interest of the victims themselves, lest, contrary to our intentions, we make their situation worse and harder to bear." He did not add that another reason for proceeding cautiously was that he regarded Bolshevism as a far greater danger than Nazism.The position of the Holy Sea was deplorable but it was an offense of omission rather than commission. The Church, under the Pope's guidance, had already saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organizations combined, and was presently hiding thousands of Jews in monasteries, convents, and Vatican City itself. The record of the Allies was far more shameful. The British and Americans, despite lofty pronouncements, had not only avoided taking any meaningful action but gave sanctuary to few persecuted Jews. The Moscow Declaration of that year—signed by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—methodically listed Hitler's victims as Polish, Italian, French, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, Soviet, and Cretan. The curious omission of Jews (a policy emulated by the U. S. Office of War Information) was protested vehemently but uselessly by the World Jewish Congress. By the simple expedient of converting the Jews of Poland into Poles, and so on, the Final Solution was lost in the Big Three's general classification of Nazi terrorism.Contrasting with their reluctance to face the issue of systematic Jewish extermination was the forthrightness and courage of the Danes, who defied German occupation by transporting to Sweden almost every one of their 6,500 Jews; of the Finns, allies of Hitler, who saved all but four of their 4,000 Jews; and of the Japanese, another ally, who provided refuge in Manchuria for some 5,000 wandering European Jews in recognition of financial aid given by the Jewish firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company during the Russian-Japanese War of 1904～1905.

单选题Every minute of every day, what ecologist James Carlton calls a global "conveyor belt" redistributes ocean organisms. It's a planet wide biological disruption that scientists have barely begun to understand. Dr. Carlton—an oceanographer at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. —explains that, at any given moment, "there are several thousand [marine] species [traveling].., in the ballast water of ships. " These creatures move from coastal waters where they fit into the local web of life to places where some of them could tear that web apart. This is the larger dimension of the infamous invasion of fish destroying, pipe-clogging zebra mussels. Such voracious invaders at least make their presence known. What concerns Carlton and his fellow marine ecologists is the lack of knowledge about the hundreds of alien invaders that quietly enter coastal waters around the world every day. Many of them probably just die out. Some benignly—or even beneficially—join the local scene. But some will make trouble. In one sense, this is an old story. Organisms have ridden ships for centuries. They have clung to hulls and come along with cargo. What's new is the scale and speed of the migrations made possible by the massive volume of ship—ballast water taken in to provide ship stability—continuously moving around the world... Ships load up with ballast water and its inhabitants in coastal waters of one port and dump the ballast in another port that may be thousands of kilometers away. A single load can run to hundreds of thousands of gallons. Some larger ships take on as much as 40 million gallons. The creatures that come along tend to be in their larva free floating stage. When discharged in alien waters they can mature into crabs, jellyfish, slugs, and many other forms. Since the problem involves coastal species, simply banning ballast dumps in coastal waters would, in theory, solve it. Coastal organisms in ballast water that is flushed into midocean would not survive. Such a ban has worked for the North American Inland Waterway. But it would be hard to enforce it worldwide. Heating ballast water or straining it should also halt the species spread. But before any such worldwide regulations were imposed, scientists would need a clearer view of what is going on. The continuous shuffling of marine organisms has changed the biology of the sea on a global scale. It can have devastating effects as in the case of the American comb jellyfish that recently invaded the Black Sea. It has destroyed that sea's anchovy fishery by eating anchovy eggs. It may soon spread to western and northern European waters. The maritime nations that created the biological "conveyor belt" should support a coordinated international effort to find out what is going on and what should be clone about it.

单选题A firm's public image, if it is good, should be treasured and protected. It is a valuable asset that usually is built up over a long and satisfying relationship of a firm with its public.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. Opinion polls are now beginning to show an unwilling general agreement that, whoever is to{{U}} (21) {{/U}}and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of{{U}} (22) {{/U}}the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to{{U}} (23) {{/U}}employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions{{U}} (24) {{/U}}which many of us can work for ourselves,{{U}} (25) {{/U}}for an employer? The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the{{U}} (26) {{/U}}of jobs. The industrial age may now be{{U}} (27) {{/U}}to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought.{{U}} (28) {{/U}}, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment as its history shows, has not meant{{U}} (29) {{/U}}freedom. Employment became widespread{{U}} (30) {{/U}}the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving{{U}} (31) {{/U}}them the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living{{U}} (32) {{/U}}themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from the people's homes.{{U}} (33) {{/U}}, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people traveled longer distances to their places of employment until, {{U}}(34) {{/U}}, many people's work lost all connection{{U}} (35) {{/U}}their home lives and the places in which they lived. {{U}} (36) {{/U}}, employment put women{{U}} (37) {{/U}}a disadvantage. It became customary for the husband to go out to{{U}} (38) {{/U}}employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to{{U}} (39) {{/U}}some effort and resources away from the{{U}} (40) {{/U}}goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.

单选题The word "slump" in the first paragraph may be replaced by ______.

单选题A few common misconceptions. Beauty is only skin-deep. One"s physical assets and liabilities don"t count all that much in a managerial career. A woman should always try to look her best. Over the last 30 years, social scientists have conducted more than 1,000 studies of how we react to beautiful and not-so-beautiful people. The virtually unanimous conclusion: Looks do matter, more than most of us realize. The data suggest, for example, that physically attractive individuals are more likely to be treated well by their parents, sought out as friends, and pursued romantically. With the possible exception of women seeking managerial jobs, they are also more likely to be hired, paid well, and promoted. Once again, the scientists have caught us mouthing pieties (虔诚) while acting just the contrary. Their typical experiment works something like this. They give each member of a group-college students, or teachers or corporate personnel mangers—a piece of paper relating an individual"s accomplishments. Attached to the paper is a photograph. While the papers all say exactly the same thing the pictures are different. Some show a strikingly attractive person, some an average-looking character, and some an unusually unattractive human being. Group members are asked to rate the individual on certain attributes, anything from personal warmth to the likelihood that he or she will be promoted. Almost invariably, the better looking the person in the picture, the higher the person is rated. In the phrase, borrowed from Sappho, that the social scientists use to sum up the common perception, what is beautiful is good. In business, however, good looks cut both ways for women, and deeper than for men. A Utah State University professor, who is an authority on the subject, explains: In terms of their careers, the impact of physical attractiveness on males is only modest. But its potential impact on females can be tremendous, making it easier, for example, for the more attractive to get jobs where they are in the public eye. On another note, though, there is enough literature now for us to conclude that attractive women who aspire (追求) to managerial positions do not get on as well as women who may be less attractive.

单选题In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of only three players in the National Basketball Association(NBA)listed at over seven feet. If he had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames. The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two inches taller now than 140 years ago, today's people — especially those born to families who have lived in the U. S. for many generations — apparently reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren't likely to get any taller. "In the general population today, at this genetic, environmental level, we've pretty much gone as far as we can go," says anthropologist William Cameron Chumlea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players, their increase in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world. Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients — notably, protein — to feed expanding tissues. At the start of the 20th century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, average height — 5'9" for men, 5'4" for women — hasn't really changed since 1960. Genetically speaking, there are advantages to avoiding substantial height. During childbirth, larger babies have more difficulty passing through the birth canal. Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture and cannot easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs. "There are some real constraints that are set by the genetic architecture of the individual organism," says anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University. Genetic maximums can change, but don't expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in Natick, Mass. , ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment, Gordon says that by and large, "you could use today's data and feel fairly confident. "